This invention relates to housings for circuit breakers and, more particularly, to an improved busbar for bringing power to circuit breakers mounted in a housing and to a method of making such a busbar.
Housings for electrical devices, such as connectors, circuit breakers, relays and fuse panels, are used in many applications, including recreational vehicles such as motor homes and boats. In a typical application, the housing carries a number of conventional circuit breakers in a side-by-side or stacked parallel arrangement and a door or cover to close and partially seal the housing. The breakers are physically mounted on a busbar made of conductive metal with spaced parallel fingers called xe2x80x9cstabsxe2x80x9d which project into spring contacts within each breaker body.
Typically such a busbar is made by extruding a long aluminum element having the desired cross section, i.e., a base plate with parallel upstanding ribs, and cutting the extruded section into short, identical pieces. Such a process of manufacture is expensive in that it requires the creation of an extrusion die, the purchase of an extrusion press, and further in that it requires significant hand labor to carry out the various operations involved in the manufacturing process.
A first aspect of the present invention is the provision of an inexpensive busbar for mounting within an electrical device housing to receive a plurality of conventional circuit breakers and make electrical connections therewith. A second aspect of the invention is a method by which the improved busbar can be manufactured by creating an inexpensive stamping and thereafter bending portions of the stamping to produce the plurality of spaced, parallel stabs. In the configuration disclosed herein, the spacing between the stabs is independent of the height of the stabs.
Other objects, advantages and applications of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art when the following description of the best mode contemplated for practicing the invention is read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.